Project Summary Retail Meat Surveillance in the State of Kansas as a Part of the National Antimicrobial Resistance Monitoring System As a key activity in combating antimicrobial resistance, the National Antimicrobial Resistance Monitoring System (NARMS) conducts surveillance of resistance in foodborne pathogens and other enteric bacteria of food animals at the time of animal processing, in meat and poultry in retail, and in human foodborne infections. The retail food surveillance is coordinated by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and in 2015 included 14 of the U.S. mainland states. The goal of this project is to extend the retail food surveillance activities to Kansas, one of the major food animal producing states of the nation. The enhanced retail food surveillance method used by the NARMS since 2015 will be implemented in Kansas. Eighty meat and poultry products from retail stores in the state will be sampled monthly. To accurately reflect exposure of the state's population to resistance in food, the sampling will be stratified to use randomly selected stores in most, moderately and least populated areas, with the sampling intensity in each area type proportional to percentage of the state's population residing there. Each of the meat and poultry samples will be analyzed for presence of Salmonella spp., Escherichia coli, and Enterococcus spp.; poultry samples also for Campylobacter spp. Epidemiological data about the production, origin, packaging, and retailing of the meat and poultry sampled will be collated and provided to the NARMS. The bacterial isolates will be subjected by the FDA to tests for antimicrobial resistance and other epidemiologically-relevant tests (e.g., Salmonella serotyping, Campylobacter speciation). The results will be used by the NARMS to enhance resistance surveillance and foodborne outbreak analysis at the national level. The results will also be returned to Kansas where they will be integrated with data on human foodborne infections, to support analysis of foodborne outbreaks by the state public health authorities, and guide public health action. The results will be delivered to clinicians to inform antimicrobial stewardship in treating foodborne infections. The results will further be innovatively used in the state to integrate data on resistance in the food animal populations, retail food, and humans. The integrated data will be analyzed to advance understanding of resistance dynamics between the animals, food, and humans. This project will strengthen surveillance and analysis of antimicrobial resistance, support foodborne outbreak analysis, and thus promote public health in Kansas and nation-wide.